"Richard A. Pence" <richardpence@pipeline.com> wrote: > Just over a year ago, a major on-line newsletter reported that some > male descendants of three men with the same surname from early > colonial Virginia did a DNA study. This study, the report said, > "proved" that the three men these people were descended from were > all the sons of one man, a also early in Virginia. I challenged > that conclusion, but the editor said he had "verified" it with an > "expert" and the conclusion was accurate. I still don't think so, > but the name of the "expert" is not known to me and I have been > unable to obtain a copy of the study that reached this remarkable > conclusion. Richard, if you let me have the reference, I'll see if our library can find it. > BTW, there indeed may be a more scientific basis for the fact that > most studies are in male-line descendancy father than in the female > line, but I stick with my reasoning: How are you going to identify > the population for the female study when all will no doubt have > different surnames? At least a major impediment. Funnily enough, my continuously female line better documented than the male one, thanks to the careful record keeping of the Dutch East India Company. Unless I've made a major mistake, my mitochondrial DNA will show that this blue-eyed, fair haired scot has a maternal line that originates in Bombay, India, thanks to the contribution from Helena van Malabar, a freed slave. I'm not entirely sure what this would prove, but it would certainly confuse a few folk! Here's the line, in case anyone is interested (running for modern to past): Cronje, du Plooy, Steenkamp, Erasmus, Liebenberg, Koekemoer, Pretorius, de Beer, Pretorius, Vosloo, van Malabar. Lesley Robertson Lesley Robertson <l.a.robertson@tnw.tudelft.nl>